


Get Yourself Free

by wintergrey



Series: The Losers: Free-Floating Prompts [4]
Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Betrayal, Community: fic_promptly, Multi, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 07:25:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintergrey/pseuds/wintergrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clay's Breakups: The Best Of Collection</p><p>Prompt: The Losers, Clay, Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover<br/>http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/170849.html?thread=7614049</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get Yourself Free

_You just slip out the back, Jack_

Easier than it sounds.

Clay’s twenty years old. His lungs are on fire. His thighs are screaming. He’s got his uniform in one hand and nothing but his boots and briefs on, nothing in his head but _shit, shit, shit_ and the flash of _please don’t let her husband have a..._ The hydrangea to his left explodes in a shower of petals. _...gun_.

****

_Make a new plan, Stan_

Clay’s getting better at it.

“I can take the bus.” Clay’s twenty-six years old. His motorcycle is a twisted heap of metal at the bottom of the ravine below him. His now-ex-girlfriend is walking away with the keys to her car--the one he took to try and catch up with her before she did this to him--and leaving him fifty miles outside of anywhere.

“Good luck with that.” She waves without turning around. Damn it.

“I’ll hitchhike,” he shouts after her.

“Yeah. ‘Cos that worked for you so well last time!” It’s the last he’ll hear from her. Later, he’ll count this as a good breakup.

When the dust settles and her car is out of sight, Clay starts walking. She’s got a point. That’s how he met her, after all.

****

_You don't need to be coy, Roy_  
 _Just listen to me_

Clay’s learning to take advice.

Slowly. He’s nearly thirty now, after all.

“You outta your mind, man.” Roque is not quite as drunk as Clay. They’re both sitting on a table in a dive bar in Honduras, the icy breath of a wheezing air conditioning unit chilling the sweat on the backs of their necks.

The daughter of the local drug lord is grinding up against one of her father’s thugs, the oil on her nearly-bare body leaving stains on his Italian silk and wool suit. She’s casting looks at Clay over her shoulder.

“It’s not like I’m gonna marry her.” Clay’s freezing and sweating to death at once, hotter still where his arm and thigh are pressed to Roque’s.

“Never say that, man.” Roque is shaking his head like Clay just said _what can go wrong?_ in the middle of the mission. “I’m gonna be sad when I have to bury your mangled ass.”

****

_Hop on the bus, Gus_  
 _You don't need to discuss much_

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You are thirty-five damn years old, Clay. Too old for this.” Roque’s body blocks out the sun as he looms over Clay. Clay would ignore him studiously except that he really needs to get off the anthill where he’s staked out--before he dies.

Roque pulls a knife out of his belt. The blade has to be nearly ten inches long. “I should put you out of your misery.” Instead he cuts the leather straps holding Clay spread-eagled in the sun.

“Thank you.” Clay can hardly move. Being released only brings on wracking cramps that add to the agony of the hundreds of little bites all over his back and ass.

“You can thank me by cutting this shit out.” Roque’s worn, familiar jacket hits Clay in the face. “Put that on.”

****

_Just drop off the key, Lee_  
 _And get yourself free_

Clay’s going to become a monk.

“How’d you know there was a bomb in my trunk?”

“Car was riding low.” Roque shrugs and reaches over into Clay’s jacket, helping himself to Clay’s case of cigarillos.

“And you decided that meant there was a bomb in my trunk?” Even for Roque, that’s a leap.

“You’re dating.” Roque digs around in his cargo pants for his lighter until Clay finds it for him--in his own pocket--and hands it over. “And you’re about to break up with her. So. Bomb in the trunk.”

“I’m becoming a monk.” What’s left of Clay’s car is a burning hulk battered by a stream from a firehose.

“I know a good monastery,” Roque says, blowing smoke skyward. It smells a great deal better than the burning synthetics from Clay’s car. “Or you could just stay at my place.”

“Thanks.” Isn’t like most of Clay’s life isn’t there already.

****

_And would you please explain_  
 _About the fifty ways_

“Something’s not right.”

Clay’s turning around to get Roque’s take on the whole clusterfuck when a gun butt--Roque’s eyes burning behind it--takes him in the face. He wakes up handcuffed and bleeding.

Everything after that is just a blur.

 _You just slip out the back, Jack..._ “Yeah.”

 _Make a new plan, Stan..._ “After the Miami fiasco, I cut a deal, Clay.”

 _You don't need to be coy, Roy_  
 _Just listen to me..._ “No, you betrayed us! Were you going to keep planning missions, finding ways to kill Max until you got us all killed?”

 _Hop on the bus, Gus_  
 _You don't need to discuss much..._ “I tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen. No. You wanted your revenge. Face to face with the big bad wolf, the voice on the radio, all that bullshit...”

 _Just drop off the key, Lee_  
 _And get yourself free..._ “Now I get to walk away.”

Clay is forty-four. He hasn’t learned a goddamn thing. He’s still washing blood and smoke off himself after a breakup.

“You okay, baby?” Aisha is standing in the doorway of the hotel bathroom, watching him put himself back together without looking himself in the eye in the mirror.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” One of these days, she’s going to try to kill him. At least Clay can’t say he didn’t see it coming.

“You do love ‘em crazy,” she says, without an ounce of hypocrisy, as she turns away.

_There must be fifty ways_  
 _To leave your lover_  
 _Fifty ways to leave your lover_

 


End file.
